Susan Taylor of Bend, Oregon, may be the poster child of the North American Right-to-Dry movement. For years, she’s been locked in combat with her homeowner association (HOA) over the HOA’s ban on clotheslines. Taylor’s HOA has issued her fines totaling hundreds of dollars and on two occasions, haters of hung laundry even came by moonlight to clip her cord.

Recently, Taylor uncovered something interesting. An obscure 1979 Oregon law may already shield the legality of sunning her wardrobe.

This law appears to have legalized clotheslines in her state 32 years ago (with an exception detailed below). The law says that no property contract such as an HOA covenant can restrict a buyers’ use of solar energy systems. Any restrictions on “solar radiation as a source for heating, cooling or electrical energy” are “void and unenforceable.”

Is Taylor’s clothes line a solar energy system? Physics says “yes”: solar radiation provides the heat that evaporates water in wet laundry. No appellate court in Oregon has ever ruled on this point, though, so anti-sun-drying HOA’s may sue.

If Taylor—or some other laundry-hanging Oregonian—can successfully make the case that clotheslines are a form of solar energy, she will be shielded under existing state law!

My advice to Oregonians? Dry on! If your HOA complains, point them to Oregon Statute 105.880. If your HOA sues you, you can be the test-case plaintif—the Oliver Brown of Brown v. Board of Education—who establishes the Right to Dry for all!

Photo courtesy of Susan Taylor

Two further notes:

1. The text of the statute follows:

105.880 Conveyance prohibiting use of solar energy systems void.

(1) No person conveying or contracting to convey fee title to real property shall include in an instrument for such purpose a provision prohibiting the use of solar energy systems by any person on that property.
(2) Any provision executed in violation of subsection (1) of this section after October 3, 1979, is void and unenforceable.
(3) For the purposes of this section, “solar energy system” means any device, structure, mechanism or series of mechanisms which uses solar radiation as a source for heating, cooling or electrical energy. [1979 c.671 §5]

It’s broad legislation. The only cases it appears to exclude are properties not sold since October 3, 1979. So residents in homes in HOA’s that have restricted clotheslines continuously since then, and that have never been sold in that period, do not have a Right to Dry in Oregon.

I presently have drying racks with laundry on them in the house. Mary, I couldn’t agree with you more. The racks cannot be put outside since it is a “clothes drying apparatus” and they cannot be visible. I have hung my clothes in the garage and I was informed the garage doors needed to be down. So much for access to the sun and wind. The absurdity of this “ban” continues to drive me nuts as well as driving me to want to change this ridiculous rule. My reluctance to continue to pursue this legally is the expense. I would like nothing better than to challenge the 1979 Oregon statute so all Oregonians could line (clothes)without the fines!

This is a sympathetic case, but the legal analysis is pretty poor. The enumeration of the terms “heating, cooling, and electrical energy” indicates that other uses of solar energy are not protected by this statute. Even if the laws of physics suggest that clothes drying is a use of solar energy for “heating”, the laws of real property suggest that homeowners’ covenants enjoy a great deal of deference, especially to the extent that they reflect specified aesthetic conventions designed to preserve the perceived rental value of the property. A lot of people find clotheslines unsightly (hence why this case arose), and homeowners’ covenants exist to give legal effect to such aesthetic preferences. If you don’t want to be bound by these covenants, you should buy property that does not include them.

The question for an appellate court in Oregon is if clotheslines fall under 105.880.

If 105.880 does protect solar drying, then covenants that ban clotheslines are “void and unenforceable” in spite of any general deference to HOAs in matters of aesthetics.

If an Oregon appellate court hears a test case, I believe it should rule that clotheslines fall under 105.880. Physics backs up this interpretation since wet laundry on a clothesline is heated by the sun. Moreover, the definition of “solar energy systems” in 105.880 is intentionally broad. Finally, even if legislators weren’t thinking about clotheslines when the statute was adopted, the court should weigh the many benefits of protecting solar drying.

In any event, a test case would clarify the matter and put this conversation to rest: regardless the outcome, it would be worthwhile for Oregonians to know where they stand with respect to clotheslines and clothesline bans.

The notion that “A lot of people find clotheslines unsightly (hence why this case arose), and homeowners’ covenants exist to give legal effect to such aesthetic preferences.” means that one must define aesthetic (like defining “art”) and that the preferences must be expressed by at least a majority of residents must agree. If these restrictions based on aesthetics seek to support property values, then where is the data that property values are lower when clothes are hung outside? Allowing the option to dry outside could mean owners have more options to save on increasign energy costs, which may support property values.

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